Blog

Ask Lawrence: How to make the best of your holiday break

12 Dec 11:00
by
Lawrence Akers

This time of year can often be challenging for professional freelancers. While many people are looking forward to paid leave, freelancers are often wishing that they could work and make money instead of stressing about if their budget is going to last.

Unfortunately, if you’re strapped for cash, there is little that can be done to change that this time of year however there are a few things that you can do to at least make the time off productive.

Keep front of mind

The first thing to do, and this is an immediate action, is to email your recruitment consultants and let them know your availability over the holiday period.

Regardless of if you’re planning to take time off or if you’re looking for work, let your recruitment consultants know. That way, they’ll know not to call you if you are wanting a break or going away, or they will have you front of mind should the right opportunity come in.

Keep in mind that your recruitment consultant is most likely going on leave too. They’re not going to want to spend hours filling a job if they can help it so if you’re a good freelancer and you let them know now, they’re going to have a process in place to make sure that they can fill those jobs with people they can trust quickly and easily.

Update your ‘sales tools’

This one is especially for those who are thinking of looking for a permanent role in the new year although it applies to everyone; take a moment to update all the sales tools that you may use to help find work and to help be found.

This not only means your CV and your folio, but also any professional networking tools such as LinkedIn.

I can’t begin to tell you how many half baked LinkedIn profiles I come across and yet there are organisations out there that have entire teams dedicated to going through LinkedIn to find the right talent for their businesses. If you’re not all over it, then you’re seriously shooting yourself in the foot.

Take a break

If you have been good with your savings over the year and can afford to take some time out, then do it. Switch off. Recharge. Do something fun. Enjoy life. There is nothing better than being able to end the year feeling relaxed and recharged so that you can start 2019 absolutely revved up and ready to go.

Learn a new skill

On the other hand, if you’re the type who can’t seem to quieten the mind and calm down, use that energy to learn a new skill that can make you even more employable in the new year.

For many people, digital is where it is at. If you don’t know what size your social media graphics should be, how to do an EDM in Mailchimp, what a landing page is or how to put together a website in Wordpress, now could be a great time to do that. Given that there are so many inexpensive or free training options on the internet, you have no reason not to dive into some further education that you can take into freelance assignments in the new year.

If you find that you’ve got a mind that won’t let you rest, there are other skills that you can learn that are more psychologically practical, such as mindfulness exercises that can assist you in being able to lessen the impact that these stressful thoughts may have on your day to day. The creative environment can provoke anxiety at the best of times and learning these skills can help to defuse from those intense feelings that may get in the way of the creative process.

Our holiday period hours

Creative Recruiters will be closing on Friday Dec 21st and reopening on Monday January 7th.

During that time, while we’ll be on holidays, we’ll obviously be taken urgent calls that require immediate assistance and anything that is non-urgent will be responded to when the office reopens.

While we’re not there yet, for those that we don’t speak to prior, have a great holiday period and we look forward to sharing an amazing 2019 together.